


What You Need to Survive the Night

by lynnenne



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-21
Updated: 2010-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:52:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynnenne/pseuds/lynnenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike is kidnapped by Wolfram & Hart. Angel and Connor rescue him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Need to Survive the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Darklingdawns](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Darklingdawns).



> Set post-"Not Fade Away" but no particular spoilers. Written for Darklingdawns as part of the Buffy Exchange Giftathon. Warnings for torture. Beta'd by Kita. Rating: Mature.

It's been dark for days. Weeks, maybe. Spike's barely seen the sun this past century, so that's not the hardship. It's the long unending sameness inside four cold walls. Not just the lack of light, but the lack of voices, sound, anything.

Back in the day, when Angelus or Darla used to throw him in the cellar, there were always sounds. The skitter of a cockroach. The sniffing nose of a rat. Once, Spike passed the time by talking to the worms he could hear burrowing beneath the floorboards.

Here, in the sterile suspension of a Wolfram & Hart holding cell, there's nothing.

*

"Willow found him."

Angel lays the phone down. Connor has never seen his face so gray. Steel and thunderclouds, sparks flying from hard surfaces.

"Where?"

"The portal's in Moscow. She's going to teleport us over."

"When?"

"Ten minutes."

Connor's never been to Moscow. When he gets there, the city is as gray as Angel's face.

It takes Willow an hour to knock down the barriers. They jump through the portal, grab Spike, and jump back. She teleports them back to their hideout, masks the trail so the firm won't find them.

There isn't even time to visit Red Square.

*

It's still dark, but now there are voices. Voices mean pain is coming. Spike isn't sure which he hates more - the pain or the quiet. The quiet usually lasts longer.

"Spike. Can you hear me?"

Didn't expect that voice, but they've used Dru and Buffy, so why not?

Blood pressed to his mouth. Smells like him, but it smelled like Dru, too. Turned out to be poison. He flinches away.

"Maybe if I - I mean, I'm human, right? My blood's probably better for him."

A different voice. The boy. They wouldn't think to use the boy.

"No."

"Dad. Don't be an ass."

Long silence. New smell now, fresh, warm. Pumping.

Spike drinks.

*

"Christ, what did they - " Connor stares down at the mess of Spike's face. Half of it is missing.

He watches Spike's head roll sideways. A few weak sips from his arm is all Spike manages. Connor stands up, grabs the first-aid kit, tapes a band-aid to the inside of his forearm.

"Da?" Spike whispers from the floor. Connor's never heard Spike call Angel that before. Poof, ponce, git - never anything paternal.

Connor has questions. He'll ask them all later.

"Yeah, it's me." Angel touches Spike's forehead. His eyes are swollen shut. "You're safe."

They work quietly, bandaging the worst of Spike's wounds. There aren't enough bandages to go around. Part of his intestine is hanging out. Angel stuffs it back inside and stitches up the wound.

The smell is enough to make Connor retch. He doesn't.

*

Spike would retch, but they haven't fed him in weeks. Nothing in his stomach to bring up. Here in animated suspension, his stomach is floating. Like being in space, he imagines. Complete lack of gravity, and he understands now why astronauts get motion sickness. It feels like he's falling all the time.

"You stink," the voice says. She wields her sword clumsily, not nearly believable. It sounds like her, but she doesn't know him. Doesn't know the right places to hurt, the hidden underneath layers that writhe and burrow like worms. His mum dissolving to dust. A cold, white bathroom. A raw soul.

"Amateur," Spike sneers, and she pushes the sword deeper into his side.

The screaming hurts his ears.

*

The screaming is familiar. Connor used to make things make that noise. Then he would pull out their teeth and string them on his necklace.

He doesn't know what to do when he can't kill the thing that's screaming.

Angel has one hand on Spike's shoulder. The other is hovering in the air, searching for a place on Spike's body that isn't an open wound.

He has to grab Spike's balls to hold him down.

*

William is tied to the bed. Spread-eagled on his back, with his dick in Angelus' mouth. It feels better than he ever imagined.

"Christ, Da." Hours of this, moans and squirming, and the begging started much earlier than usual. "Please."

Angelus lets Spike's cock pop out of his mouth. The sound is wet, heavy. He takes the knife, and cuts another thin line on Spike's balls. Licks up the blood that springs there.

"Darla did this to me, when I was your age," he muses. "Always wondered why she had such a taste for torture. I'm beginning to see the appeal."

He runs the blade against his thumb. Spike's eyes widen. "She peeled the skin off my balls in one long strip, like an apple. I wonder if I could do that?"

It takes a month for the skin to grow back. Angelus feeds Spike his blood every day.

*

Spike looks like a half-wrapped mummy. White and red, and Connor wonders how long it will be before they can move him.

"Maybe we should think about finding a new hideout," he says. "I mean, in case he told Wolfram & Hart where to find us."

Angel shakes his head, a small movement. "He didn't."

"How do you know? I mean, anyone would, after all this—" Connor waves his hand at Spike's broken body.

Angel presses his lips together and says nothing.

*

"Where is she?" William is hanging from the rafters in the basement. There are cockroaches in the corner, feeding on the dead blood spatters on the stone floor. Angelus hasn't let him eat in weeks. He has barely enough blood left in him to stay conscious, but somehow it's enough to keep the roaches alive.

"I know the two of you cooked up some cockamamie scheme about running away." William can't see the bastard, but the voice is close now, right next to his ear. "Just like I know she'll come back. Drusilla always does."

The sound of footsteps on stone, and he's backing off. Waiting. "So you might as well tell me now. Save yourself another week of this."

"Fuck you," is the whispered reply.

The screaming hurts his ears.

*

"I don't get it," Connor says. "It's Wolfram & Hart. They have all this magic and stuff. Why didn't they just yank the information out of his head?"

Angel is sponging dried blood away from Spike's face. "You have to really know someone if you want to get inside their mind."

Spike is murmuring words and nonsense, sounds that Connor can't understand.

"He lived with you for a long time?" Connor asks.

Angel shrugs. "Twenty years. Not much to us."

Connor is twenty years old.

"He was a poet, back then," Angel says. "He loved Dru more than anything."

The perfect weapon, then. Connor gets it. The first of a thousand scars. Layer upon layer, until his heart is criss-crossed with thickened tissue, leather he won't wear on the outside until years later. Crocodile hide, sharks and other monsters.

The kind that survive for a hundred million years.

It takes a month for Spike's skin to grow back. Angel feeds him his blood every day.

*

Spike wakes up, finally. He's been sort of awake these last weeks, in and out, but now he's _awake_ awake.

And alone.

"Angel?" He hates the tremor in his voice. The room is empty.

He waits for an hour. Maybe two. He can hear the worms in the earth.

Angel comes back loaded down with blood and supplies. "You're awake."

Spike nods. "Where's the boy?"

"Groceries."

Spike nods again.

Angel sits on the floor next to him. Hands him a plastic container. Spike opens it, sniffs. "Pig?"

"Figured you were ready for real food again."

Spike guzzles it down. It's the first time he's had an appetite in months.

"Ta," he says, and tosses the empty container aside.

Then he climbs into Angel's lap and kisses him.

"What—" Angel pulls back.

"Shut it," Spike says. " 'M randy as fuck. Been ages." He unzips Angel's trousers, grips his dick. Already hard. "For you, too, I'd wager."

Angel moans into Spike's mouth.

They topple to the floor. Spike on his back, Angel on top. Some things don't change, and that's a comfort.

Spike's skin is new. His nerve endings raw. He can feel every inch of Angel's body pressing against his; he wants all their clothes gone.

Angel has thoughtfully brought home some lube in his bag of supplies. His grin is embarrassed. It makes Spike laugh. The sound is so foreign to his ears that for a minute he wonders what laughter is for.

"Look at you, Mister Boy Scout. Planning on this, were we?"

"Not planning, so much. Just—I know you."

And that's a comfort, too.

Spike groans low and dirty when Angel pushes into him. No pain, and that's heaven. He's had enough to last him at least one or two more lifetimes.

"Christ, yeah. Give it to me. Fuck, Angel—" Spike's voice is no longer raw.

Angel shouts Spike's name when he comes. It gets Spike off hard.

They lie together, tangled and lazy. "Connor'll be back soon," Angel mutters into Spike's skin.

"Guess we should get dressed, then."

"Mmm." Neither of them move.

"He'll have questions." Spike bites the side of Angel's neck. Licks up the blood that springs there.

"I'll answer them all. Later."

They get dressed. Spike slides his leather coat on. It feels pliable under his hands. Elastic as a heart covered in scars.

"Hate you." He grins at Angel. "Poof."

Angel runs his hand through Spike's hair. "You're welcome."


End file.
